


Wayfaring Strangers

by tenshinokorin



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors, 闇の末裔 | Yami No Matsuei | Descendants of Darkness
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Ghost Stories, bishonenink halloween special, no unsolicted concrit please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2542634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin/pseuds/tenshinokorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was four days after the tsunami, and Sendai would never be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wayfaring Strangers

Sage was there to meet them at the dojo door when they arrived, mop in his hand and his pants mud-caked to the knees. The courtyard of the Date family home was a universal shade of sticky gray, muck laying thick on the ornamental lanterns and painting the trunks of the sakura waist-high. But it was better than many other houses they'd passed on the way in. For one, it was still standing. 

"You came," Sage said. His voice was full of weary gratitude, but not surprise. Though he hadn't called them or asked for them to come, the other four warriors were there in the middle of the devastation as though long-appointed, arms full of bottled water and food, hearts full of shared grief and sympathy. 

"The trains are all a mess," Sai said, hugging Sage hello without the least regard for the mud that transferred to his jeans. "We just armored up and ran the last few miles." He took Sage by the shoulders to better look him in the eye. "Are you all right? Is your family all right?" 

Sai's questions uncorked a deluge more from the others: were his neighbors accounted for, had all the cats made it, was there anything he needed, what could they do. Sage tried to thank them, to politely decline their earnest offers before accepting them, as tradition demanded, but exhaustion overcame courtesy, and he dropped his mop to reach out for them instead. 

It was four days after the tsunami, and Sendai would never be the same. 

The Date family had been lucky, or perhaps the spirits of the city had protected its oldest family. The house and the dojo had been built well, up on a hillside that was higher than the rest of the street. The earthquake had not damaged its tenacious foundation. And while the waterlogged gardens and muddy lower floors would need time and manpower to restore, they could still be restored. The houses lower down the road had been flooded to the rafters, and were still little islands in standing water. Closer to the sea, many of the houses and their inhabitants had simply washed away. 

The work was exhausting, disheartening, but Sage's spirits slowly improved in the company of his friends. They threw themselves into whatever task needed doing, as though their industry could deafen the dire news reports, the body counts. 

Pet koi older than Sage's mother had been washed out of the garden pond, once a cool mirror of the sky, now a muddy hollow. Sai and Kento set aside a few hours each day to work on it, thinking that one bright spot of beauty would mark some kind of progress. They were salvaging water lily bulbs from the muck when Sai first noticed the strangers. 

Strangers were common after the tsunami. Every day, hollow-eyed men and women came to the dojo door with wrinkled snapshots and threadbare hope. Sage, as the eldest son of his exalted line, invited them into the one clean room in the dojo with the gracious magnanimity of royalty. He poured them tea, wept with the ones still capable of weeping, prayed with the ones that still believed in god, and offered them every comfort that feudal hospitality could provide. But the missing remained missing.

Sai later realized what about these two newcomers first drew his attention: their clothes and shoes were perfectly clean. But even that would only come to him in retrospect. In the moment he saw them, as he stood up to stretch his back, he only knew they were disquieting. They stood just opposite the open dojo gate, beside a telephone box, but neither of them was making a call. Nor were they talking, or taking pictures, or checking their cell phones. They were just standing there. 

Kento gave them a glance, shrugged, and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "Reporters," he said, and went back to excavating the muck. 

Sai wasn't sure. The younger one was surely not old enough for such a job, he couldn't be out of his teens. The older one, a tall man swathed up in a big black coat, didn't have the harried look of the other media people that had descended on the prefecture. Sai glanced down and saw the spade he'd been looking for, and then glanced back at the dojo gate. The strangers were gone. 

Sai felt a cold trickle of unease down his spine, but he put the strangers from his mind. There were lots of things going on in the city now, lots of people coming and going. And if there was something less than natural about those two, well. Thousands of people had been wiped out of existence in an instant. It would be more surprising if there were no ghosts at all.

 

"I think he saw us," Hisoka said, glancing back over his shoulder at the dojo on the hill. "There was something strange about him." 

"There's something strange about all of this," Tszusuki answered, looking down into the flooded lower streets, his expression bleak. "How many for today?" 

"As many as we can find and bring in," Hisoka sighed. Things in the office had been chaos for days now. A dozen shinigami--the most that could be spared--had been pulled from their own sectors to help with matters in Sendai. After a disaster of such magnitude, the underworld had its own cleaning up to do, and they found themselves every bit as short-handed and overwhelmed at their chore as mortals did at theirs. "Tatsumi and Watari are handling the school--" Hisoka saw the shudder of grief across his partner's eyes, and hurried on, "--so we can keep working the neighborhood here." 

Tsuzuki took out his phone and thumbed through an app unique to the bureau. It was a list, and the list was long. There were lots of question marks and parenthetical insertions. The gushoshin were pulling out their feathers back in the Enma-cho, trying to sort the living lists from the dead lists, to filter out the names of the souls stuck in-between. Tsuzuki shook his head and stuffed his phone back in his pocket. So far, they'd had their best luck finding strays just walking up and down the streets. Without funerals or memorials, without the recognizable signs of incense and formal black kimono, and with whole blocks vanished, the dead were just as stunned and confused as the living. Almost all of them were glad for someone with a kind smile to come along and tell them where they ought to go.

 

Rowen saw them next, late at night a few days later. They were across the street again, but this time having a circular, inaudible argument with an old man in muddy coveralls. The younger one seemed matter-of-fact, the older one cajoling. The old man's voice rose loud enough for Rowen to hear; he insisted he wasn't going anywhere. Rowen was just about to walk over and make sure there was nothing dodgy going on when a hand touched his shoulder, and held him back. 

"Don't," Sage said, with a curious expression on his face. "It's fine." 

Rowen's eyebrows drew down in a frown. It was nearly midnight, the streets were deserted, and something about the three men across the street gave him a sharp feeling of wrongness. "I dunno," he said. "Sai said he saw a couple of suspicious characters around. There's people in this world that'll take advantage of people after a disaster. I don't think--" 

"Come with me," Sage said abruptly, and walked across the empty street. The two young men stopped their conversation immediately, and the older fellow blinked up from his bushy eyebrows in surprise. 

"Seiji-kun!" the old man was saying, as Rowen caught up to them. "Maybe you can straighten these boys out. They've made a mistake, trying to get me to go somewhere with them--" he leaned over to Sage and in a whisper audible to anyone, added, "I think they're shady. Run them off, will you?" 

"Good evening, Gentlemen." Sage bowed politely to the two strangers. "I understand you're here to take Fujiwara-san to see his wife?" 

"We're here to--" the younger one began, his luminous green eyes mortal only in their obvious irritation. 

"Yes!" said the one in the black coat, obviously relieved. "Yes. That's. That's right." 

"Michiko!" the old man said, brightening. "Why, you should have said she sent you! Michiko, you know, she's the sweetest thing, but so forgetful. Haven't seen her in..." 

"Six years," Sage answered, rather woodenly. 

Rowen's discomfort had gone from bad to worse. The conversation was like a familiar tune that had been recorded backwards and then played in reverse: the notes were right, but there was a terrible wrongness to the thing overall. 

Fujiwara-san seemed to be considering things. "Well, if it's for Michiko...and Seiji-kun here vouches for you fellows... I guess I better go along." 

"It would really be for the best," Tsuzuki said, earnestly. 

The old man patted Sage kindly on the arm, and if he noticed the way Sage flinched and froze up in response, he made no sign. "All right, then." 

"Thanks for your help," Hisoka said, managing to sound a little piqued that Sage's help had even been needed. 

"If you have any other trouble in the neighborhood, let me know," Sage replied. And before Rowen could even open his mouth to ask what the hell was going on, the three of them were gone. 

No netherworld gate, no whoosh of teleportation, just gone. The other night noises rushed in to fill the vacuum that had formed, and only then did Rowen realize how silent the night had been while they were talking. Sage was a faint blond ghost in the moonlight, and yet a moment ago Rowen had seen him and the three other men as though it was broad daylight. Rowen looked up and saw the looming shadow of a dark streetlight. The power grid had not yet been fully restored in Sage's neighborhood. 

"Whuh--" Rowen began, but Sage pulled back his sleeve and showed Rowen a lurid red mark on his pale arm, like a burn in the shape of a handprint. Even as Rowen watched, it began to fade.

"Fujiwara-san's wife died six years ago," Sage said. "And a week ago rescue crews found his body in the wreckage of his house, just around the block. I helped them identify him." Slowly, Sage rolled his sleeve back down. 

Rowen looked at the place where the two men had been standing, remembering their too-bright eyes, their voices, and the fact that they had cast no shadows. He shivered with a mortal chill that all the mystic armor in the universe could not prevent. "So those... those two... they were..." 

"Whatever they are, I don't think we would have even seen them if we weren't armor bearers." Sage pulled Rowen back towards the kerosene-lighted warmth of the dojo, and Rowen, craving something solid and wholesome, went willingly. "But this is my town," Sage continued, "And in times like this we all have to help one another." 

~o~

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write about Sage and the 2011 quake for a long time, since Sendai is his hometown. Nothing was quite right before now. I really have to thank Ladynero815 for the crossover suggestion, it was perfect.


End file.
